|
Taiwan’s importance to Australia
By Nikola Kaurin
In November 2011, 36 delegates from Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asian countries were selected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take part in a 10-day study camp.
As fortune would have it, the camp began several days after former international security fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Paul Kane wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times calling for the US to “ditch Taiwan” in exchange for “writing off the [then] US$1.14 trillion of American debt held by China.”
As delayed a response as this may be, it is important to share why this very small nation has every right to exist.
First, it is true that the US and Australia do not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state and it certainly does not have the full trappings of one. However, it is one of Australia’s most important allies and economic partners in Asia.
Taiwan is the world’s 19th-largest trader, which is impressive considering it is the world’s 28th-largest economy, an equally impressive figure taking into account its limited official diplomatic recognition.
Above all, Taiwan has proved to be Australia’s friend on interests relating to peace and stability in North Asia. If Western nations were to choose who they support based on official diplomatic recognition, then it would mean supporting such nations as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo with appalling human rights records over consistent allies such as Taiwan.
Second, US foreign policy since Sept. 11, 2001, has promoted the expansion of democracy across the world. The US National Security Strategy document dated Sept. 17, 2002, said: “[The US] will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.”
This policy has continued during the administration of US President Barack Obama, with the US supporting democratically elected governments in Libya and Egypt despite those governments not necessarily being in the US’ strategic interests. While the merits of the Arab Spring can be debated at another time, it is good policy to support nations with democratically elected governments, peaceful ambitions and free and open societies. Taiwan is one of these, and “ditching” it, as Kane calls for, would paint irrelevant the deaths of thousands of Coalition Forces and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and US foreign policy since that time.
Third, and the most important point. Taiwan will maintain peace and stability in cross-strait relations with China not by possessing sufficient quantities of US defense materiel or by maintaining a police state, but because it is a democracy.
Freely elected democracies whose citizens share liberal democratic values will always act in a manner that preserves their own survival and stability.
Twenty-three million people, equal to the population of Australia, have made a living in Taiwan’s free and open society, and despite electing a pro-independence government from 2000 to 2008, Taiwanese are not likely do anything that jeopardizes their well-being or that of their neighbors.
They are also the only ones who have the right to decide their political future.
Nikola Kaurin is a foreign policy writer based in Sydney and Zagreb.
source: Taipei Times
|
